obfuscatory support/sales practices

[eburtman]

Yesterday I received the following text message from 900070001181: 

“Verizon Msg: ELIZABETH, great news! As a valued customer, you're eligible for an exclusive loyalty discount of $25/mo. off of your current Unlimited plan (no plan change is required). Just call 800.922.0204 today to get this limited-time offer.”

I was skeptical, so I reached out to Verizon support through the My Verizon app to find out whether this was a legitimate promotion or a sc*m/spam text. (By the way, did you know the word “sc*m” is considered a bad word by this forum’s spellchecker?) The person I spoke with never directly answered my questions and spent most of the conversation trying to get me to change my phone plan. I expressed about three different times that I did not want to change my plan, but the person I spoke with kept offering to “help me” with the “benefits” on a couple of different plans while I “waited” to hear whether the promotion was real or not. I requested a before/after comparison of projected bills with the changes they were proposing; they said they’d provide this, but did not follow through. In the end, they did apply the $25 discount to my account and stated that they respected my decision not to change my plan. 

This is unfortunately not a novel experience with Verizon for me: virtually every time I have attempted to contact support, the people I’ve spoken with have almost universally seemed more interested in touting particular plans than in providing useful information about what those plans truly include and cost. The support/sales scripts seem designed to obfuscate and upsell rather than provide useful support and information. I get that this is probably in Verizon’s short-term corporate interests, but it’s not any kind of an honest or helpful way to do business. 

After yesterday’s experience, I wanted to provide feedback, but couldn’t find an appropriate support category to do so. I opened another support ticket as best I could, and the person who responded recommended that I post here. (Now that I see this is a peer-to-peer forum, I’m wondering what the goal of getting me to post here would be. I don’t want a space to vent, I want Verizon corporate to pay attention to the less-than-ideal customer experience they’re providing.) 

For the sake of posting a discussion forum question, then, has anyone else had similar experiences? What concrete suggestions might you make to Verizon support and sales leadership? 

[vzw_customer_support]

eburtman, allow us to start by apologizing that you have had to go through all of this. You should be receiving excellent customer service no matter who is assisting you. We are sorry if this did not occur. We do take your feedback seriously and will pass this along. You may also always leave any feedback on our website. You will see a Feedback tab along the right-hand side of the screen. This will ensure your feedback gets to the correct team. 

-Christine

[eburtman]

Thanks, Christine. I’m on mobile so I see a Feedback option in the hamburger menu rather than as a tab on the right-hand-side of the screen, but regardless, this Feedback option seems more geared toward website/technical feedback. However, I’ll try that next time.